Stephen Hume: Time to get serious about youth hockey safety

Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun columnist04.03.2013

The latest brain research, based on nearly 20 years of actual hospital injury reports for almost 13,000 injured kids aged five to 19, finds minor hockey as it is now practised across Canada is responsible for almost half of all the brain injuries recorded for the six team sports most popular with kids.

When are minor hockey officials in this country going to genuinely grapple with the fact the sport they administer is one of the most dangerous recreational activities to which parents can expose their children?

Is it going to take a class-action lawsuit before the game is reformed — as it must eventually be? Because based on the latest research into brain injury in children playing minor hockey, if dramatic steps are not taken pretty quickly, you can bet that is what will be coming down the pipe.

Given the findings of a scientific paper published last week, Mechanisms of Team-Sport-Related Brain Injuries in Children Five to 19 Years Old: Opportunities for Prevention, you can be sure liability lawyers somewhere are mulling that option.

This latest brain research, based on nearly 20 years of actual hospital injury reports for almost 13,000 injured kids aged five to 19, finds minor hockey as it is now practised across Canada is responsible for almost half of all the brain injuries recorded for the six team sports most popular with kids.

Of the 12,799 brain injuries recorded, 5,675 — or 44.3 per cent — occurred in hockey games to kids under 19. The predominant cause of injury was body checking. For players aged 10 to 19, whether girls or boys, being body checked into the boards was the leading cause of brain injury, followed by checking from behind.

For players under nine, the leading cause of injury was falls. Here’s the shocking twist on that statistic, though — the study found that “helmet usage was lowest among younger hockey players.”

Hockey, it turns out, resulted in almost eight times the brain injuries reported for minor rugby — another robust contact sport played without padding or helmets — and yielded twice as many brain injuries as minor soccer, which has many more players.

Acknowledging these facts does not represent an attack on Canada’s game or on the people who organize, coach and mentor young players. Minor hockey officials are well-meaning. They do what they do because they love Canada’s game. But they had better get a grip on this.

To be fair, body checking has been dropped from all house-league play, which advocates say affects 75 per cent of kids playing. A new five-minute major penalty for hits to the head has been brought in, and there are educational programs for recognizing and dealing with concussions.

But critics like the Rick Hansen Institute say these steps do not address the problem. The institute notes last year BC Hockey turned down a recommendation that body checking be dropped for all kids under 15 playing rep hockey, too.

The institute says young rep players are at greatest risk for head and spinal injuries. And it advocates single-age tiers for all league play below 15 to address size differentials and the “bobblehead” injury afflicting young players with proportionally heavier heads and weaker necks.

Go to the BC Hockey website to find player safety — which includes fostering sportsmanship and managing risk — it ranks last on the list of strategic objectives, behind promotion, recruitment, finance, identifying excellence, providing high-performance programs and so on. Safety should be first, because if it isn’t addressed, the other objectives become redundant.

Hockey administrators, and I’m the first to acknowledge they deserve gratitude for volunteering, are charged with looking out for children’s interests, not putting them in harm’s way. Yet that is precisely what the research shows our current approach to minor hockey is doing.

If fostering sportsmanship is at the bottom of the administrators’ “to do” list, it shows in the injury statistics. Boarding and checking from behind are two major causes of brain injury for young players. What does that say about minor hockey’s success in educating kids in sportsmanlike conduct? And if traditional penalties don’t curb this behaviour, will a new penalty for head hits be any more effective?

Researchers say player education is as important as changing the rules — checking from behind has been outlawed for 20 years, yet it still causes one in 10 hockey brain injuries — but eliminating youth body checking offers a significant opportunity for instant harm reduction.

And where are the politicians on this file? They draft reams of legislation aimed at child protection. But confronted with the reality of an iconic activity that injures children in large numbers, they go missing in action.

Minor hockey officials, politicians and parents must get serious about this. It should be on every agenda. The science says so and recommends solutions.

Parents, read the research. There’s a lot of it. Then start making some genuine noise with administrators and politicians.

Come on, folks. There’s an adage that if you don’t manage change, then change will manage you. Big changes are needed in minor hockey. Get on with it.

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Stephen Hume: Time to get serious about youth hockey safety

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